Saturday, January 21, 2017

Is Vipassana meditation a fast track to liberation?*

Twenty-six centuries ago
Gautama Buddha designed a meditation technique that has been helping
people to not only train their minds to stay in a balance, but also to
liberate them from Samsara (reincarnation chain).

Gautama used to say that
there were Buddhas (enlightened people), there are Buddhas, and there will
be Buddhas after him, but his role is to provide an efficient meditation technique that could help people reach liberation
(moksha or nirvana) in the present life that will allow one never
to come back to the materialistic reality and to experience suffering again.

Before the invention of
his own meditation technique, Gautama had tried different meditation methods designed
by others, but he never was satisfied by the quality and deepness of them, so
he invented his own, which is known as Vipassana meditation technique.

What the Vipassana technique is about

In short, the Vipassana meditation
technique is about getting rid of addictions that we have accumulated during innumerable
materialistic existences. These addictions (filth and/or
imperfections) are hidden in the deeper mind — our subconscious.

In the beginning of the
Vipassana meditation course, a student’s goal is calming down his or her mind
by focusing on breathing and cleaning the mind from thoughts.

Then, the students do
meditation exercises for activating the subconscious. The access to the subconscious
is going to provide an option for self-healing, first of all — a physical body, and later on — a soul.

The subconscious is like
a dark room, and concentrating on breathing shall light it, making the previously
hidden sins (addictions) visible.

We experience those
addictions through the sensations of our body.

The goal of these exercises
is to keep us indifferent to those sensations.

Why Vipassana

Imagine yourself as a
traveler who came to this world with a heavy luggage of karma and a desire to
make it lighter.
The project named Your Life is
already designed for you, and everything that you need can be found by
following Your Destinyscript. Your Life project is interactive,
and your task is to correct your sins (imperfections) that you have done during
your previous existences and to make your luggage lighter.

You could succeed with this
job and return back to Your Home with
a smaller bag, or you could fail, generating an extra negative karma and return
home with a larger bag than before. The smallest group of the travelers will
come home with no luggage at all. This group of people are the luckiest ones — burning away all sins (negative karma), they
generate no reason to return back to
Samsara.
One of the techniques that helps people grab this good fortune is Vipassana.

Benefits of
Vipassana

The students who are
following the Code of Discipline and precisely heeding the teacher’s
instructions are getting a chance to get great benefits from the Vipassana
meditation.

These benefits are:

·To train a mind to stay in a balance in
everyday life.

·To increase the energy level of the physical
body.

·To study the philosophy Gautama Buddha in the
interpretation of his loyal follower, S.N. Goenka, the influential Vipassana
meditation teacher.

·To get in touch with your own subconscious.

·To get healed.

·To obtain a release of the old hurt.

·To get ability to transform negativity into
positivity.

·To receive a supernatural experience.

·To network with like people.·To reach the ultimate goal of a human being - get a redemption from Samsara.

*Note: This article is based on my personal
experience and thoughts after my first 10-day meditation course of Vipassana,
and is not presented to be an absolute truth. – Jacklyn A. Lo.

Next article will tell
about possible side effects of the Vipassana, organization of the training, and
accommodations in the retreat territory.